Columns

Some states are known for things they produce in abundance. Idaho has potatoes, Maine has lobsters and South Carolina seems to have more than our fair share of politicians with loopy, if not downright embarrassing, ideas.
This is not really new for the Palmetto State as we have a long history of such loopy ideas – secession, printing our own currency, denying children an education based on their skin color, etc. – and these are just the things proposed in the last few years.
And now we are at it again.

Many, if not most, South Carolina state lawmakers have a peculiar understanding of the separation of powers. For them, the principle seems to mean that all powers should be removed from the executive and judicial branches and concentrated in the legislature.

This editorial ran in thenerve.org, an online publication of the S.C. Policy Council, an independent, nonprofit research group promoting free-market policies and government transparency.

Exactly one year ago, The Nerve’s Rick Brundrett published a story on how legislative caucuses – the General Assembly’s partisan strategizing organizations – somehow get to avoid being designated as public entities. This despite the fact that they meet, rent-free, in public office space and by definition deal with public business.

A few news items, two from South Carolina and two national:
Item one: S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson called David Pascoe (the special prosecutor that Wilson appointed) a “liar” over his handling of a public corruption case.
It began with a barrage of harsh words from Wilson delivered with great heat and passion and ended with a flurry of papers filed in court. Gov. Nikki Haley called the whole thing “an embarrassing mess.” There’s no reason to think it won’t continue for a while.

How do you feel when you help make someone else’s dream come true? That’s what you’re doing when you volunteer to work on a Habitat home.
Most folks who have done it will tell you it’s gratifying and can be downright addicting.
National Volunteer Week is a fitting time to celebrate the people who make the work of Habitat for Humanity of Lancaster County possible. Volunteers are the heartbeat of Habitat. We are grateful for our current volunteers and looking for more.

I have heard a lot of comment over the last few weeks about how the new storage unit buildings that have gone up on U.S. 521 in Indian Land are unattractive, with their flat facades facing the road, parallel to the road and only a few feet back from the road.

We have reached a point where we, as Americans, must make a decision.
Do we adhere strictly to the values that have shaped our nation, or do we accept that as the world changes, so must our value system? If the world functioned in a rational, civilized manner, the old ways would always be the right ways and we could go on forever, avoiding change.
Sadly, we can all see that things, they are a-changing’.

What have I missed? I am completely baffled, perplexed, beyond confused.
I sometimes feel like a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin – like I have somehow drifted off into a 20-year sleep, and have now awakened in a different time and place. My country has somehow morphed into a place with which I no longer can identify. And it has happened so quickly, so dramatically, that I am perplexed as to how this transformation has taken place.

We all know that the success of our higher education system is vital to the success of our state.
This column is not about all the good things or all the failings of our individual institutions of higher education. Let’s just say we have some great institutions and some not-so-great ones. At the great institutions, we do some things well and some things not so well. At the weaker institutions, we do some things well and some things not so well.
In short, there’s room for improvement at all of them.

In December 2014, a bill was introduced in the S.C. Senate by Larry Grooms of District 37 and Danny Verdin of District 9. The bill asks Congress to hold a convention of the states for the sole purpose of amending the U.S. Constitution to allow states to define and regulate marriage.
This bill arrived in the Senate one month after the Supreme Court agreed to review a same-sex marriage case because the circuit courts had given conflicting rulings on the constitutionality of marriages of this variety. A ruling on the case would set a national legal precedent.